SPACE TOURISM DAMAGING OZONE LAYER, STUDY FINDS

A study by three top universities has found that the soot given off by spacecraft is damaging the layer of protective ozone around the planet.

This means that space tourism companies like Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin could be undoing the progress made to heal the ozone layer.

The study was done by scientists from UCL, the University of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to probe the impact of craft leaving and returning to Earth on the atmosphere, in particular the upper parts.

The scientists studied data from 103 rocket launches that took place in 2019, including those by the top three space tourism companies.

During the study, they found the warming due to soot more than doubled after just three years of additional emissions from space tourism. One of the reasons why this is happening could be because of added rubber in the fuel.

One of UCL’s scientists and the study’s co-author, Dr Eloise Marais said likening spacecraft emissions with aircraft and ground-based sources was “erroneous”.

SkyNews reports that while the university researchers acknowledged that the current damage to the ozone layer is small, they suggested regulation on the growing industry of people travelling to space for touristic purposes to protect from future problems.

Image credit: Space